TIN ROOF
by Joseph Duerst
“Fuck it’s
cold,” Jake said as he dipped his frostbitten fork into the yellow soup on his
flower printed plate. I shivered as I
watched him attempt to scoop up the bits of oily white egg, which slipped off
his fork every time he tried to lift them to his mouth. He then would proceed to duck his chin low
and try to catch the egg in his mouth before it fell, but he would only
accomplish this once every few times.
When he did, drops of the egg yoke would inevitably land in the tuffs of
curly hair on the end of his chin, soaking in and freezing after a few
seconds. I turned my gaze from the
yellow icicles hanging from Jake’s chin and watched the mist of my breath as I
exhaled.
“How can you
eat them runny?” I asked, not looking as he
slurped in a bit of egg white.
“It’s like a
cold slug in your throat.”
I laughed and
scrunched up my nose in disgust, then kicked my boots against the tin roof,
knocking off some of the snow that clung to the bottoms and causing a mini
avalanche that disappeared beyond the roof’s edge. The bare silver roof was now exposed in a
trail below me. The rest of the roof was
still covered in 6 inches of snow, which remained untouched, except where Jake
and I had crawled out to the center from the left of the house where our latter
rested. Shifting my weight to glance at
this scene, I felt the snow mound I sat on slide slightly. Jake took a sip from his snow-chilled
Budweiser. His hands were bare and
white, but he didn’t seem to notice, because he gripped the icy beer in his
hand as if it were warming his fingers.
Shit, the beers were probably warmer than the air by now.
I’d had too
many beers last night, so I hadn’t opened mine.
Last night was the first night it snowed this fall so we celebrated by
having a few too many beers, like we needed another reason to drink too
much. We drank all night and waxed our
skis and when the sun came up we tried calling the SnowPack Hotline, but they
don’t update their reports until 5 am, so we decided to climb on the roof and
check out what the mountain looked like.
It took us a minute to see that the mountain was completely covered in
snow, but we also noticed that the highway, just a block from our house, was
also covered. We thought we’d stay up on
the roof a while and see if some dumb motherfucker would drive too fast and
cause a crash. Opening morning of
snowfall usually caught a few unprepared victims.
“So I met this
English guy yesterday at the Powder House.
Fucking crazy ass guy. He’s like
totally English you know. Teeth like a
chipmunk, wild hair, bad breath, forehead like a bucket of nails, bug eyes, you
know, just goofy looking,” Jake said, but he was one to talk. Beneath this puffy blue North Face jacket and
red beanie, he was scrawny, white and hairy.
He was wearing cargo shorts that exposed his hairy shins to the frigid
air and his suede skate shoes were speckled with snow powder that clung to
them. He had dreadlocks and a patchy
beard, both of which would freeze after a couple hours at the mountain and
break off in pieces like peanut brittle.
“So anyway, I don’t remember how we
got to talking about it,” Jake said. “I
think he asked me how much weight the lifts can take or something. But anyways, we got to talking about weight
and this is what he said: He said that
where he comes from in England they measure everything in stones.”
“Stones? What do you mean?”
“Like a stone
weighs 14 pounds, so he’s all,” Jake used an English accent, “I weighed 13
stones last year, but I lost a stone, which is like 14 pounds, so now I only
weigh 12 stones. So I weigh like 168
pounds.”
I thought
about it for a second. “I weigh like 14
stones.”
“I think he
was fucking with me though.”
“Where would
they get 14 pounds?”
“I have no
idea. Maybe they got one stone and
weighed it and said,” He switched to his English accent, “Alright mates, this
here stone shall be the King’s stone and all measurements shall be compared to
this here stone, cheerio.”
“That’s
Australian mate.”
“Let me hear
you do one then.”
“Here comes
one,” I nodded towards the highway. A
car appeared from behind the pine trees that blocked our view of the highway to
the left and traveled across the open stretch.
“Come on
buddy, it’s straight, drive a little faster.”
The car sped
up a little, catching a patch of ice and its tail end sliding a bit. Our eyes lit up, but the car regained its
footing quickly and disappeared beyond our view.
“Shit, stupid
motherfucker! Nobody ever crashes,” Jake
said, his fork taking a dip.
“Man, I’m
fucking cold, let’s go down.”
“You don’t
think I’m cold?”
“Exactly,
let’s go.”
“Just stay up
here a little longer. Wait till I finish
eating.”
I sighed. “Yo man, where’s Macy been,” I asked. “She hasn’t been around in a while.”
“We broke up
man.”
“Your idea?”
“Nah man.”
“Really,
that’s surprising. What’d she say?”
“Man, I don’t
know, she’s a bitch. She says I’m not
doing anything with my life. She says
that she wants someone who’s like a doctor or a lawyer or something. I said good luck. She works at fucking Wal-Mart.”
“I didn’t want
to tell you this while you were together, but she’s annoying as hell. That voice, my god!”
“Thing is I
only started dating her because she said she could get me 50% off anything
there.” We both laughed.
“Jesus man, it’s
too cold. Let’s go inside,” I said.
“What are we
gonna do?”
“I don’t know,
but I can’t take it anymore.” My face
was numb, my skin was pale, and while I was wearing jeans, my jacket was not
North Face. I stood up, nearly losing my
balance as the snow slid from under my boots.
It was pretty
dangerous on that tin roof. We had
always joked about turning it into a sick jump, but the drop was too extreme,
unless it snowed a lot. Our house was a
carbon copied two-story dump with plaster walls that wouldn’t hold nails,
because the plaster would break and turn to white dust, which made hanging my X
Games shots impossible. Needless to say
our place looked pretty empty. A few
competitions had paid the rent for the next few months, so Jake and I could focus
on skiing without having to hold down jobs.
At least this was true as long as Jake didn’t overspend on new equipment
and random shit, like the 2nd X-Box he bought for his room. I really couldn’t complain though, because
Jake had won the bulk of the money that paid the rent in the competitions we
went to. He was carrying my ass last
year, so I was ready to get out there and earn my keep this year. However, I really only had one thing over
Jake when it came to skiing and it came about, because Jake is just crazy.
Two years ago,
Jake was playing drunken ping-pong, and to impress some girls, he did a
sidelong dive to hit a stray ball. He
made the play, but went head first into our porcelain Elvis bust, a going away
gift from Jake’s mom (don’t ask me why). Elvis was destroyed and Jake cracked his scull. Three things resulted from this
incident. First, Jake had to wear a
helmet all day, every day for two months.
Second, Jake’s mom disowned him for destroying her gift, because she saw
it as a personal insult and finally, the reason for this story, Jake developed
a susceptibility to fainting. It wasn’t
like he was narcoleptic or something, but he would faint at random times here
and there, which was good for me if it happened before a competition, because
often our coach would force him to drop out.
I began to pray for Jake to faint and at times, I attempted to cause him
to faint, which I do regret. But with
Jake out of the way, I had a chance of placing in the top three usually. Competing against him is impossible, because
he is so crazy that he’ll do the most dangerous shit and usually to pull it
off. He has no fear of getting
hurt. People like that are unstoppable.
“Shit, it’s so
slick up here,” I said, attempting not to slide off the roof as I headed
towards the latter. “You coming?”
“Yeah I’ll be
there in a sec,” he replied, taking a whole fried egg in his mouth. “Damn I gotta take a shit! I’m gonna drop a stone’s worth!” He began to laugh hysterically, barely
keeping the yellow drool from seeping from his mouth.
I shook my
head, stepping tentatively on the ladder, testing it with my foot. Jake continued to laugh, attempting to hold
it in. His snicker moved upward into his
nose until his nose was spitting yellow.
“Jesus man,” I
said, watching his display.
Suddenly his
face froze in that hysterical state, lips still wide, teeth clenched, holding
in the laughter, eyes teary. The egg
yoke escaped the corner of his mouth, leaking down his cheek and mingling with
his whiskers, then dripping to his plate, where it made a hard clinging sound
as the almost frozen drops hit. Jake’s
grip on the plate loosened and at that moment, I realized what was happening,
but I had both feet a few rungs down the ladder. The plate crashed to the tin roof, shattering
instantly and sending yellow splattering across the roof. Jake’s body drooped forward, hitting the roof
and sliding. In seconds, Jake had
disappeared beyond the edge of the roof.
THUMP.
Jake’s chin
hit the curb and his forehead hit the blacktop.
This force alone was enough to snap his neck, not to mention shatter his
teeth and crack his scull again. When I
got down there, his mouth oozed orange goo, which freaked out the paramedics
when they arrived. His left shoulder
took most of the impact, and his collarbone shattered. Amazingly, Jake wasn’t dead and though he
couldn’t talk, he was able to draw a picture of a stick figure dropping a
stone’s worth with his good hand, while we rode to the hospital in the back of
the ambulance.
The doctors put Jake in a neck brace,
did reconstructive surgery on his teeth and collarbone and Macy had to look
after him for close to six months while he recovered. Despite all this, Jake never showed distress
over being physically deformed, disabled for several months or over listening
to Macy talk his ear off, while I had free reign at all the competitions. I placed 1st in the Pepsi
invitational and paid the rent for a couple months with the winnings, though I
never did as well after that. After his
recovery, Jake went on to win regionals and came close to winning
nationals. I placed 12th at
regionals and received a complimentary fruit basket. Jake always did have the talent.
No comments:
Post a Comment